Very anti fb or anything like that. Something more mobile friendly was what i was thinking. Keeping the information is crutial.

Who in the group is willing/able/capable of migrating/converting the current forum to something more mobile friendly AND supporting it on a long term basis? I'm guessing very few.

In the past I've built and supported websites for various kiting groups including NorthWest Buggy Pilots Association (NWBPA), Washington Kite Flyers Association, North American Power Kiting Association (NAPKA) and Ivanpah Buggy eXpo.

This is a project I wouldn't even consider taking on. Any Techies out there think they have the right stuff?

BTW - is it possible we could upgrade to a later version of the software we are using? Would that help?

Also - could we solve the cost problem by allowing advertising on the forum. I know it is annoying, but it is easy to just ignore it.

Quote: Originally posted by Morrie Williams

Who in the group is willing/able/capable of migrating/converting the current forum to something more mobile friendly AND supporting it on a long-term basis? I'm guessing very few. ...Any Techies out there think they have the right stuff?

I'll raise my hand. I have done Linux system administration and MySQL administration. My team at UF runs PHP/MySQL-based apps written locally and by other teams. I am slowly teaching them so I can give up my systems work.

Whereas I have never run XMB or any other forum software I can learn anything if I am motivated to apply myself to it. The big issue for me is capacity. I don't think I have the capacity at the moment to learn the forum software and the environment I'd want to run it in. I expect that would change in April or June.

As Bob said, the cost might be an issue. Commercial migration services would cost about $650. Fully hosted services can be $300 - $400/mo. Rolling it yourself on a cloud provider is cheaper, but not trivial. It's not enough to run one machine with everything on it. At the very least you need to have disaster recovery services. You might need redundancy and scalability. You'll need a method to do software upgrades. Precious few of those services are free and the rest will add up rapidly. So the forum needs income or a benefactor. I'm down for being a partial benefactor, but I would need someone else with some skin in the game.

Once you make the move to the new platform, you have committed to the recurring cost. If the motivation to pay the recurring cost wanes, what then?

I'll commit to this: I'll use my spare cycles over the next 6 months to learn Vanilla Forums. I think it is the best option to support the migration of the old content. It seems to be light on resource consumption as well. I could use a partner in this. If I am completely solo the project is at more risk from my whims, distractions and the risk of me stepping in front of a bus.

Who else has run apache, Mysql, nginx, Linux, etc? Who else understands what it means to have a disaster recovery plan? Docker anyone? Kubernetes?

Peace out,
Philip

Phil, U2U sent.